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In this year’s Great Performers issue, A.O. Scott writes that kissing in movies ‘‘established a glamorous iconography and an elegant choreography for an experience that, in real life, is frequently sloppy, clumsy and less than perfectly graceful.’’ Here, a few of the most romantic kisses on film, from young love to foiled love.

Using weather to heighten the emotions of a kiss scene may be clichéd, as A.O. Scott acknowledges in his brief history of kissing in movies for this year’s Great Performers issue. But such scenes, he writes, ‘‘still seduce.’’ Here, the quintessential film kisses under stormy or clear skies.

Not every kiss is an act of love. In some cases, it’s an act of aggression, as A.O. Scott notes in his essay for this year’s Great Performers issue. ‘‘Think of Michael Corleone locking lips with his traitorous brother Fredo on New Year’s Eve in Havana, a fratricidal kiss of death.’’ Kisses can therefore be lethal — but not always right away.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age. Grierson’s last article for the magazine was about Olga Kotelko, a 91-year-old track star, which became the basis for his book “What Makes Olga Run?”

How did you first hear about Ellen Langer or grow interested in her research?

Ellen must have been hiding in my blind spot. She’s been doing her thing for almost four decades, but I didn’t stumble across her until I was researching my book, What Makes Olga Run? A chapter of that book deals with human limits and the role of the mind therein. I called Ellen up. She told me the story of her mother’s and grandmother’s afflictions. Then I learned she was contemplating this cancer study. It started to feel like a story.

Did she surprise you in any way?

About 20 seconds into a conversation with her, you know she’s different. She doesn’t sound like a scientist. She speaks in the rhythms of one of those old borscht-belt comics — punch, punch, punch, stop-me-if-you’ve-heard-this-before. There’s almost a narrative intelligence — if that’s a thing — that’s more obvious than her scientific intelligence. She’s an artist — literally (she paints) and also in sensibility. She’d surely agree with Einstein that not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured. She’s fun to be around, but she kind of wore me out.

The New York Times Magazine Photographs exhibition opened last month at Aperture’s exhibition space in Chelsea. The pictures, culled from years’ worth of editorial assignments, will remain on display through Nov. 1. A few highlights can be seen in the slide show above.

When I reported my article on the flood of private campaign money that is washing away the traditional party system, I focused on the what and the how. But the why is also fascinating. What drives billionaires, who could do anything with their money, to engage in the frustrating work of politics? Certainly you could argue — and many do — that the engagement is entirely a matter of personal gain. But if you listen to Tom Steyer, who has dedicated more than $50 million of his own money to electing Democrats this fall, or Charles and David Koch, whose Americans for Prosperity is expected to spend more than $125 million on Republican candidates and policies this fall, you will hear a more philosophical story. Here, in their own words, are the worldviews that motivate them. The Steyer quotes are from my own recent interviews. In the case of the Kochs, who did not agree to be interviewed, I have cited various public statements.

On the role of government

Tom Steyer: The reason you have a government is: A community decides that they are a community and they have common needs and they should be organized in order to solve those. And you have a democracy so that you get the answer that the most people agree with. That’s the theory; that is not bad. If you don’t believe in community, you don’t believe we have common interests with other people, then, you know, it’s fine to imagine that we’re really all living in caves, and when we go outside it’s completely fair to hit each other over the head with clubs and then, you know, cook us for dinner. [But] that’s not actually how American society has achieved the things that it has achieved.

Charles Koch: In many ways, our vision for Koch Industries reflects the genius of America’s founders, who took a very different course from what was normal in Western Europe 240 years ago. As they saw it, the job of government was not to protect people from themselves or control their lives; it was to establish freedom so people could live their lives as they thought best, reaping the rewards or suffering the negative consequences of their own actions. As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights that we already have, not something a government can presume to give us. Thus the founders did not propose a government to deliver or guarantee happiness (a hopeless cause, however well-intended), but one that would be limited enough to allow people to pursue happiness for themselves. (From Discovery, the Koch Industries newsletter, Jan. 31, 2014)

Nicholas Confessore, political correspondent for The New York Times, wrote this week’s cover story about the political battle over school lunches. He answered readers’ questions in a Facebook Q. & A. last week. We had a few more for him.

How did you first get interested in school lunches?

One day this spring I was chatting with Sam Sifton, our dining editor, who noted that there were a lot of Times reporters writing about restaurants, cooking and nutrition, but not as many writing about the politics of food — the hidden battles in Washington that shape what ends up on our plate. This was a topic I found pretty intriguing. I spent some time talking to lobbyists, food activists and government officials, and it quickly became clear to me that the Obama administration’s school-lunch experiment was one of the biggest stories in food politics. I spend a lot of time writing about the intersection of influence, money and power, but it was fascinating to be able to tie those themes to food — something even politically apathetic people care about and have a stake in.

I remember lunch ladies fondly. What do officials call them in public?

There is a bit of a stigma around the term “lunch ladies,” a term some find faintly disparaging or dismissive, and others have tried to reclaim as a term of pride. The polite or safe term is “school nutrition professionals.” The Obama administration’s top food-policy adviser, Sam Kass, likes to call them “school chefs” — these are, after all, the people who have a very tough job feeding our kids, and most of them are working very hard to come up with creative, tasty, cost-effective meals.

Children are seen by all the world’s cultures as a blessing; food is universally recognized as the staff of life. Put them together, however, and you have the stuff of deepest conflict. In this Food Issue, we offer dispatches from the embattled family table, that contested terrain where our children take aim at us, and we at ourselves. Our survey includes photographs of breakfast around the world; an inside account of the Washington fight over the government’s role in school lunch; a look at snacktime, when a bag of candy can make us feel like a child again; and dinner, a.k.a. ground zero, the meal that can bring peace or madness. Consume it all in good health, but please take your dishes to the sink when you’re done.

Latest Issue | October 19, 2014The men of Wellesley College, the oligarching of American politics, Cristela Alonzo's family-focused sitcom and more.

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The 6th Floor is the blog of The New York Times Magazine, where staff members — editors, designers, writers, photo editors and researchers — share ideas, arguments, curiosities and links.